This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the application of rabbinic literature in studying the history of late-Roman Palestine. It has been demonstrated that a great deal of ...
More

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the application of rabbinic literature in studying the history of late-Roman Palestine. It has been demonstrated that a great deal of evidence preserved within the rabbinic tradition in medieval manuscripts originated in the Roman provinces of Palestine between c.200 and c.700 CE. It was also shown that rabbinic texts, even at their most reliable, can only provide a very partial glimpse of late-Roman Palestine. This chapter also highlights the inherent problems using rabbinic texts as historical source and suggests ways to overcome them.Less

Conclusion

MARTIN GOODMAN

Published in print: 2011-01-13

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the application of rabbinic literature in studying the history of late-Roman Palestine. It has been demonstrated that a great deal of evidence preserved within the rabbinic tradition in medieval manuscripts originated in the Roman provinces of Palestine between c.200 and c.700 CE. It was also shown that rabbinic texts, even at their most reliable, can only provide a very partial glimpse of late-Roman Palestine. This chapter also highlights the inherent problems using rabbinic texts as historical source and suggests ways to overcome them.

Vivienne Law acquired a mastery of the field of late antique and early Medieval Latin grammar, her first task was to familiarise herself with the early medieval manuscripts in which grammatical texts ...
More

Vivienne Law acquired a mastery of the field of late antique and early Medieval Latin grammar, her first task was to familiarise herself with the early medieval manuscripts in which grammatical texts were transmitted. This task necessitated constant travel to British and continental libraries in order to provide herself with transcriptions of grammatical texts; it also necessitated the acquisition of a huge collection of microfilms of grammatical manuscripts. Her work on these manuscripts soon revealed a vast and uncharted sea of unedited and unstudied grammatical texts, for the most part anonymous. A major component of her life's work was the attempt to chart this sea. Her earliest publications reveal a profound experience of grammatical manuscripts and a refusal simply to reiterate the opinions of earlier scholars. All these publications report new discoveries, such as previously unknown Old English glosses to the Ars grammatica of Tatwine, an early 8th-century Anglo-Saxon grammarian; or unsuspected aspects of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and continental learning as revealed in the transmission of the grammars of Boniface and Tatwine; or the true nature of the jumbled and misunderstood grammar attributed to the early Irish grammarian Malsachanus.Less

Vivien Anne Law, 1954–2002

Michael LapidgePeter Matthews

Published in print: 2005-01-20

Vivienne Law acquired a mastery of the field of late antique and early Medieval Latin grammar, her first task was to familiarise herself with the early medieval manuscripts in which grammatical texts were transmitted. This task necessitated constant travel to British and continental libraries in order to provide herself with transcriptions of grammatical texts; it also necessitated the acquisition of a huge collection of microfilms of grammatical manuscripts. Her work on these manuscripts soon revealed a vast and uncharted sea of unedited and unstudied grammatical texts, for the most part anonymous. A major component of her life's work was the attempt to chart this sea. Her earliest publications reveal a profound experience of grammatical manuscripts and a refusal simply to reiterate the opinions of earlier scholars. All these publications report new discoveries, such as previously unknown Old English glosses to the Ars grammatica of Tatwine, an early 8th-century Anglo-Saxon grammarian; or unsuspected aspects of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and continental learning as revealed in the transmission of the grammars of Boniface and Tatwine; or the true nature of the jumbled and misunderstood grammar attributed to the early Irish grammarian Malsachanus.

This chapter begins by introducing the most significant features of Scottish literary manuscript miscellanies, such as: their relatively late date, in comparison with surviving miscellanies from ...
More

This chapter begins by introducing the most significant features of Scottish literary manuscript miscellanies, such as: their relatively late date, in comparison with surviving miscellanies from elsewhere in the British Isles; their copying by scribes who also functioned as notary publics, writers to the signet, and merchants; their links to some of Scotland’s most prominent book-owning families; and their inclusion of material derived from print and from south of the border. The remainder of the chapter offers a necessarily brief case study of one particular Older Scots literary manuscript miscellany (Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.1.5) in which the Older Scots romance, Lancelot of the Laik, is placed alongside a selection of Scottish courtesy texts and legal material, a series of English and Scottish prophecies, several acts of the Scottish parliament, an English translation of Christine de Pisan’s Livre du Corps de Policie, and the only surviving manuscript copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia.Less

Lancelot of the Laik and the Literary Manuscript Miscellany in 15th- and 16th-century Scotland

Emily Wingfield

Published in print: 2015-06-11

This chapter begins by introducing the most significant features of Scottish literary manuscript miscellanies, such as: their relatively late date, in comparison with surviving miscellanies from elsewhere in the British Isles; their copying by scribes who also functioned as notary publics, writers to the signet, and merchants; their links to some of Scotland’s most prominent book-owning families; and their inclusion of material derived from print and from south of the border. The remainder of the chapter offers a necessarily brief case study of one particular Older Scots literary manuscript miscellany (Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.1.5) in which the Older Scots romance, Lancelot of the Laik, is placed alongside a selection of Scottish courtesy texts and legal material, a series of English and Scottish prophecies, several acts of the Scottish parliament, an English translation of Christine de Pisan’s Livre du Corps de Policie, and the only surviving manuscript copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia.

This volume aims to rethink critical assumptions about a particular type of medieval manuscript: the miscellany. A miscellany is a multi-text manuscript, made up of mixed contents, often in a mixture ...
More

This volume aims to rethink critical assumptions about a particular type of medieval manuscript: the miscellany. A miscellany is a multi-text manuscript, made up of mixed contents, often in a mixture of languages; such a volume might be the work of one compiler or several, and might have been put together over a short period of time or over many years (even over several generations). Such variety proves problematic when attempting to form critical judgements, particularly in terms of terminology and definitions. These issues are explored in the introduction, and the fifteen essays that follow discuss a great number of manuscript miscellanies produced in Britain in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Some of the chapters offer new insights into very well-known miscellanies, whilst others draw attention to little-known volumes. Whilst previous studies of the miscellany have restricted themselves to disciplinary or linguistic boundaries, this collection uniquely draws on the expertise of specialists in the rich range of vernacular languages used in Britain in the later Middle Ages (Anglo-French, Middle English, Older Scots, Middle Welsh). As a result, illuminating comparisons are drawn between miscellany manuscripts that were the products of different geographical areas and cultures. Collectively the chapters in Insular Books explore the wide range of heterogeneous manuscripts that may be defined as miscellanies, and model approaches to their study that will permit a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the production of these assemblages, as well as their circulation and reception in their own age and beyond.Less

Published in print: 2015-06-11

This volume aims to rethink critical assumptions about a particular type of medieval manuscript: the miscellany. A miscellany is a multi-text manuscript, made up of mixed contents, often in a mixture of languages; such a volume might be the work of one compiler or several, and might have been put together over a short period of time or over many years (even over several generations). Such variety proves problematic when attempting to form critical judgements, particularly in terms of terminology and definitions. These issues are explored in the introduction, and the fifteen essays that follow discuss a great number of manuscript miscellanies produced in Britain in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Some of the chapters offer new insights into very well-known miscellanies, whilst others draw attention to little-known volumes. Whilst previous studies of the miscellany have restricted themselves to disciplinary or linguistic boundaries, this collection uniquely draws on the expertise of specialists in the rich range of vernacular languages used in Britain in the later Middle Ages (Anglo-French, Middle English, Older Scots, Middle Welsh). As a result, illuminating comparisons are drawn between miscellany manuscripts that were the products of different geographical areas and cultures. Collectively the chapters in Insular Books explore the wide range of heterogeneous manuscripts that may be defined as miscellanies, and model approaches to their study that will permit a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the production of these assemblages, as well as their circulation and reception in their own age and beyond.

This chapter focuses on the early-seventeenth-century library of Sir Robert Cotton, which represents a later stage in the history of the post-Reformation library and its response to the medieval ...
More

This chapter focuses on the early-seventeenth-century library of Sir Robert Cotton, which represents a later stage in the history of the post-Reformation library and its response to the medieval textual past. It argues that the first users of the Cotton Library generated protocols concerning the uses of medieval manuscripts that became foundational for modern scholarship—chief among them, a conviction in the truth-wielding capacities of the original source. But they did so by effacing the original contexts and drastically altering the protocols of reading from which those manuscripts first drew their meaning.Less

A Library of Evidence: Robert Cotton's Medieval Manuscripts and the Generation of Seventeenth-Century Prose

Jennifer Summit

Published in print: 2008-08-15

This chapter focuses on the early-seventeenth-century library of Sir Robert Cotton, which represents a later stage in the history of the post-Reformation library and its response to the medieval textual past. It argues that the first users of the Cotton Library generated protocols concerning the uses of medieval manuscripts that became foundational for modern scholarship—chief among them, a conviction in the truth-wielding capacities of the original source. But they did so by effacing the original contexts and drastically altering the protocols of reading from which those manuscripts first drew their meaning.

The first collected edition of Augustine's works, published in 1505–6 by the Basel publisher Johann Amerbach, was the version that was used by the first generation of Reformers, including Martin ...
More

The first collected edition of Augustine's works, published in 1505–6 by the Basel publisher Johann Amerbach, was the version that was used by the first generation of Reformers, including Martin Luther, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Philip Melanchthon and Ulrich Zwingli. The work made an important contribution to establishing the Augustinian canon, yet in many other respects also continued traditional, late-medieval, forms of textual presentation. This chapter assesses the significance of the work for the intellectual history of the Reformation. It explores the manuscript dissemination of Augustine's works in the late fifteenth century before studying how Amerbach's edition dealt with this tradition. It argues that the work contributed crucially to Augustine's emancipation from to the ecclesiastical institutions that had traditionally preserved his legacy.Less

The Arrival of the Printing Press

Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Published in print: 2011-03-31

The first collected edition of Augustine's works, published in 1505–6 by the Basel publisher Johann Amerbach, was the version that was used by the first generation of Reformers, including Martin Luther, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Philip Melanchthon and Ulrich Zwingli. The work made an important contribution to establishing the Augustinian canon, yet in many other respects also continued traditional, late-medieval, forms of textual presentation. This chapter assesses the significance of the work for the intellectual history of the Reformation. It explores the manuscript dissemination of Augustine's works in the late fifteenth century before studying how Amerbach's edition dealt with this tradition. It argues that the work contributed crucially to Augustine's emancipation from to the ecclesiastical institutions that had traditionally preserved his legacy.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the interactions between medieval texts and the manuscripts that contain and shape them. It provides a definition of ...
More

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the interactions between medieval texts and the manuscripts that contain and shape them. It provides a definition of compilation, not as an objective quality of either texts or objects, but rather as a mode of perceiving such forms so as to disclose an interpretably meaningful arrangement, thus bringing into being a text/work that is more than the sum of its parts. It then discusses what the four manuscript compilations examined in the present study reveal about the social, political, and textual life of fourteenth-century London.Less

Compilation, Assemblage, Fragment

Arthur Bahr

Published in print: 2013-03-04

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the interactions between medieval texts and the manuscripts that contain and shape them. It provides a definition of compilation, not as an objective quality of either texts or objects, but rather as a mode of perceiving such forms so as to disclose an interpretably meaningful arrangement, thus bringing into being a text/work that is more than the sum of its parts. It then discusses what the four manuscript compilations examined in the present study reveal about the social, political, and textual life of fourteenth-century London.

This chapter draws attention to a work that stands outside the sphere of Saxony and the Ottonian court: the Vita S. Uodalrici by Gerhard of Augsburg (composed 982×993). This work has come down in ...
More

This chapter draws attention to a work that stands outside the sphere of Saxony and the Ottonian court: the Vita S. Uodalrici by Gerhard of Augsburg (composed 982×993). This work has come down in twenty-five medieval manuscripts, two of which are preserved in Oxford. Gerhard, the biographer of Ulrich, was a priest of the bishopric of Augsburg and seems to have belonged to the household of Ulrich during the last twenty years of Ulrich’s bishopric. His vocabulary is limited. Gerhard’s Vita S. Uodalrici consists of 23,103 words (not including names and numbers), but only 2,742 different lexical items are found within it. It was criticized for its mass of barbarous names and its realism within ten or fifteen years of its publication.Less

Walter Berschin

Published in print: 2005-11-24

This chapter draws attention to a work that stands outside the sphere of Saxony and the Ottonian court: the Vita S. Uodalrici by Gerhard of Augsburg (composed 982×993). This work has come down in twenty-five medieval manuscripts, two of which are preserved in Oxford. Gerhard, the biographer of Ulrich, was a priest of the bishopric of Augsburg and seems to have belonged to the household of Ulrich during the last twenty years of Ulrich’s bishopric. His vocabulary is limited. Gerhard’s Vita S. Uodalrici consists of 23,103 words (not including names and numbers), but only 2,742 different lexical items are found within it. It was criticized for its mass of barbarous names and its realism within ten or fifteen years of its publication.

This chapter surveys the evidence concerning William of Alton’s life and works and describes several of the obstacles to exploring them. By contrast with his contemporaries Albert the Great, ...
More

This chapter surveys the evidence concerning William of Alton’s life and works and describes several of the obstacles to exploring them. By contrast with his contemporaries Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas, William has rarely been cited or discussed by other authors since the Middle Ages, and apart from his recently edited commentary on Lamentations, none of his known works has been reproduced. In other words, for several centuries he had virtually no literary history. Also, the commentaries ascribed to him pose numerous problems of attribution—most copies of the writings believed to be his are anonymous, and the fragmentary evidence left by medieval scribes is often contradictory. Further, the near absence of editions of any authenticated writings and the lack of any known theological treatises by him make it difficult to establish a basis for evaluating works of uncertain authenticity.Less

William of Alton: An Englishman in Paris

Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

Published in print: 2011-10-14

This chapter surveys the evidence concerning William of Alton’s life and works and describes several of the obstacles to exploring them. By contrast with his contemporaries Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas, William has rarely been cited or discussed by other authors since the Middle Ages, and apart from his recently edited commentary on Lamentations, none of his known works has been reproduced. In other words, for several centuries he had virtually no literary history. Also, the commentaries ascribed to him pose numerous problems of attribution—most copies of the writings believed to be his are anonymous, and the fragmentary evidence left by medieval scribes is often contradictory. Further, the near absence of editions of any authenticated writings and the lack of any known theological treatises by him make it difficult to establish a basis for evaluating works of uncertain authenticity.

This book expands the ways in which we interpret medieval manuscripts, examining the formal characteristics of both physical manuscripts and literary works. Specifically, it argues that manuscript ...
More

This book expands the ways in which we interpret medieval manuscripts, examining the formal characteristics of both physical manuscripts and literary works. Specifically, it argues that manuscript compilations from fourteenth-century London reward interpretation as both assemblages and fragments: as meaningfully constructed objects whose forms and textual contents shed light on the city's literary, social, and political cultures, but also as artifacts whose physical fragmentation invites forms of literary criticism that were unintended by their medieval makers. Such compilations are not simply repositories of data to be used for the reconstruction of the distant past; their physical forms reward literary and aesthetic analysis in their own right. The compilations analyzed reflect the full vibrancy of fourteenth-century London's literary cultures: the multilingual codices of Edwardian civil servant Andrew Horn and Ricardian poet John Gower, the famous Auchinleck manuscript of texts in Middle English, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. By reading these compilations as both formal shapes and historical occurrences, the book uncovers neglected literary histories specific to the time and place of their production. The book offers a less empiricist way of interpreting the relationship between textual and physical form that will be of interest to a wide range of literary critics and manuscript scholars.Less

Fragments and Assemblages : Forming Compilations of Medieval London

Arthur Bahr

Published in print: 2013-03-04

This book expands the ways in which we interpret medieval manuscripts, examining the formal characteristics of both physical manuscripts and literary works. Specifically, it argues that manuscript compilations from fourteenth-century London reward interpretation as both assemblages and fragments: as meaningfully constructed objects whose forms and textual contents shed light on the city's literary, social, and political cultures, but also as artifacts whose physical fragmentation invites forms of literary criticism that were unintended by their medieval makers. Such compilations are not simply repositories of data to be used for the reconstruction of the distant past; their physical forms reward literary and aesthetic analysis in their own right. The compilations analyzed reflect the full vibrancy of fourteenth-century London's literary cultures: the multilingual codices of Edwardian civil servant Andrew Horn and Ricardian poet John Gower, the famous Auchinleck manuscript of texts in Middle English, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. By reading these compilations as both formal shapes and historical occurrences, the book uncovers neglected literary histories specific to the time and place of their production. The book offers a less empiricist way of interpreting the relationship between textual and physical form that will be of interest to a wide range of literary critics and manuscript scholars.

This chapter presents a reading of booklet 3 of the Auchinleck manuscript. It argues that the codicological elements of booklet 3—its internal structure, relation to the rest of the manuscript, and ...
More

This chapter presents a reading of booklet 3 of the Auchinleck manuscript. It argues that the codicological elements of booklet 3—its internal structure, relation to the rest of the manuscript, and codicological details such as catchwords and page layout—both complement and complicate its texts' literary explorations of fantasies.Less

Arthur Bahr

Published in print: 2013-03-04

This chapter presents a reading of booklet 3 of the Auchinleck manuscript. It argues that the codicological elements of booklet 3—its internal structure, relation to the rest of the manuscript, and codicological details such as catchwords and page layout—both complement and complicate its texts' literary explorations of fantasies.

This short coda to the volume draws links with the poetic miscellanies or recueils produced in continental Europe during the same period, noting points of comparison between the two categories of ...
More

This short coda to the volume draws links with the poetic miscellanies or recueils produced in continental Europe during the same period, noting points of comparison between the two categories of manuscript. This is an important reminder that even insularity has its limits, and that literary and textual traffic permeated international borders even in the pre-modern age.Less

Afterword

Ardis Butterfield

Published in print: 2015-06-11

This short coda to the volume draws links with the poetic miscellanies or recueils produced in continental Europe during the same period, noting points of comparison between the two categories of manuscript. This is an important reminder that even insularity has its limits, and that literary and textual traffic permeated international borders even in the pre-modern age.

This chapter presents a reading of the Trentham manuscript of works by John Gower. It argues that Trentham's seemingly straightforward presentation of its author and audience is complicated by the ...
More

This chapter presents a reading of the Trentham manuscript of works by John Gower. It argues that Trentham's seemingly straightforward presentation of its author and audience is complicated by the architectural complexity of the manuscript's codicological form and its texts' evocation of past history. The manuscript, juxtaposed with Chapter 3's consideration of the Canterbury Tales, also upends some of the more reductive literary histories that Chaucer has been made to serve. By embodying some of the many non-Chaucerian ways in which England's post-Chaucerian literary forms developed, and looking back to elements of literary culture from the 1320s and 1330s that were examined in Chapters 1 and 2, Trentham shows that Chaucer himself need be neither end point nor center of the literary histories seen in medieval England.Less

Rewriting the Past, Reassembling the Realm : The Trentham Manuscript of John Gower

Arthur Bahr

Published in print: 2013-03-04

This chapter presents a reading of the Trentham manuscript of works by John Gower. It argues that Trentham's seemingly straightforward presentation of its author and audience is complicated by the architectural complexity of the manuscript's codicological form and its texts' evocation of past history. The manuscript, juxtaposed with Chapter 3's consideration of the Canterbury Tales, also upends some of the more reductive literary histories that Chaucer has been made to serve. By embodying some of the many non-Chaucerian ways in which England's post-Chaucerian literary forms developed, and looking back to elements of literary culture from the 1320s and 1330s that were examined in Chapters 1 and 2, Trentham shows that Chaucer himself need be neither end point nor center of the literary histories seen in medieval England.

This chapter presents a reading of the corpus of manuscripts overseen by London City chamberlain Andrew Horn. It argues that both the codicological form and the textual contents of the manuscripts ...
More

This chapter presents a reading of the corpus of manuscripts overseen by London City chamberlain Andrew Horn. It argues that both the codicological form and the textual contents of the manuscripts participate in and help create an urban, mercantile reading culture in which compilational interpretation formed one crucial facet of a broader textual competence necessary to protect London's civic liberties from abrogation.Less

Civic Counter Factualism and the Assemblage of London : The Corpus of Andrew Horn

Arthur Bahr

Published in print: 2013-03-04

This chapter presents a reading of the corpus of manuscripts overseen by London City chamberlain Andrew Horn. It argues that both the codicological form and the textual contents of the manuscripts participate in and help create an urban, mercantile reading culture in which compilational interpretation formed one crucial facet of a broader textual competence necessary to protect London's civic liberties from abrogation.

This chapter presents a reading of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The first section analyzes Chaucer's decision to use one of his earlier, self-standing poems as the Knight's Tale. The second section ...
More

This chapter presents a reading of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The first section analyzes Chaucer's decision to use one of his earlier, self-standing poems as the Knight's Tale. The second section argues that, even as Fragment I uses the quyting drama of its headlinks to ensure its codicological integrity, it invites us to contemplate the construction of alternate tale orderings, referred to as threads, that would radiate outward from the Knight's Tale if and when the storytelling contest runs aground. The trajectory traced by Fragment I suggests disillusionment with the notion that the idealized, socially reinforcing courtly performances central to the Knight's Tale could be effectively translated into “oure cite” of Chaucer's London.Less

Constructing Compilations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Arthur Bahr

Published in print: 2013-03-04

This chapter presents a reading of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The first section analyzes Chaucer's decision to use one of his earlier, self-standing poems as the Knight's Tale. The second section argues that, even as Fragment I uses the quyting drama of its headlinks to ensure its codicological integrity, it invites us to contemplate the construction of alternate tale orderings, referred to as threads, that would radiate outward from the Knight's Tale if and when the storytelling contest runs aground. The trajectory traced by Fragment I suggests disillusionment with the notion that the idealized, socially reinforcing courtly performances central to the Knight's Tale could be effectively translated into “oure cite” of Chaucer's London.

This chapter outlines that, although disciplinary history posits the beginning of a historically minded interest in the Middle Ages at the so-called Early Modern period, the beginning of a “modern” ...
More

This chapter outlines that, although disciplinary history posits the beginning of a historically minded interest in the Middle Ages at the so-called Early Modern period, the beginning of a “modern” form of medieval studies is more particularly associated with German developments and allied with its rigorous philological methodology. Historical consciousness is a measuring stick for the achievement of a highly valued modern frame of mind, and a rare and exceptional characteristic of Western civilization. The chapter begins with a critique of the nationalist premises of a European-centered medieval studies through attention to Hispanic American examples such as Andrés Bello and María Rosa Lida. It illustrates in particular how the methodological parameters of nineteenth-century German philology became a global design, exported to the colonies as the proper way of doing medieval studies, and how the notion of philological Romanticism, tied to nationalism, also functions as a global design delimiting the modernity or backwardness of different disciplinary approaches. In the case of early Hispanic American endeavors, the paradox of searching for a nationalist-inflected medieval studies highlights the difficulties of placing non-European medievalist engagements within global European parameters. In terms of Romantic nationalism and German editorial methodology, the accessibility of original medieval manuscripts also acts as a global design determining the backwardness or modernity of Castilian language scholarship. It is necessary to consider hegemonic parameters to understand more fully the discursive strategies that allowed foundational and imperial narratives to thrive in the realm of philological scholarship as a marker of intellectual modernity.Less

The Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary Historiography

Nadia R. Altschul

Published in print: 2012-03-15

This chapter outlines that, although disciplinary history posits the beginning of a historically minded interest in the Middle Ages at the so-called Early Modern period, the beginning of a “modern” form of medieval studies is more particularly associated with German developments and allied with its rigorous philological methodology. Historical consciousness is a measuring stick for the achievement of a highly valued modern frame of mind, and a rare and exceptional characteristic of Western civilization. The chapter begins with a critique of the nationalist premises of a European-centered medieval studies through attention to Hispanic American examples such as Andrés Bello and María Rosa Lida. It illustrates in particular how the methodological parameters of nineteenth-century German philology became a global design, exported to the colonies as the proper way of doing medieval studies, and how the notion of philological Romanticism, tied to nationalism, also functions as a global design delimiting the modernity or backwardness of different disciplinary approaches. In the case of early Hispanic American endeavors, the paradox of searching for a nationalist-inflected medieval studies highlights the difficulties of placing non-European medievalist engagements within global European parameters. In terms of Romantic nationalism and German editorial methodology, the accessibility of original medieval manuscripts also acts as a global design determining the backwardness or modernity of Castilian language scholarship. It is necessary to consider hegemonic parameters to understand more fully the discursive strategies that allowed foundational and imperial narratives to thrive in the realm of philological scholarship as a marker of intellectual modernity.

This introduction presents Golden’s methodological approach to connect illustrative styles across decades, genres, and national borders to offer a new framework for viewing the arc of a vibrant ...
More

This introduction presents Golden’s methodological approach to connect illustrative styles across decades, genres, and national borders to offer a new framework for viewing the arc of a vibrant genre. Across this chronological sweep from the serial to the graphic novel, illustrative styles of caricature and realism are applauded, scorned, refashioned, revaluated, maintained, and revised. This introduction lays out how this study differs from, builds upon, and complements previous examinations of the Victorian illustrated book by providing a single-authored, sustained record of the illustrated book from the vantage point of the genre’s evolving aesthetics, paying particular attention to material culture. The introduction provides summaries of the book’s four body chapters and conclusion. The introduction concludes with an examination of important antecedents of the Victorian illustrated book—including the classical concept of ut pictura poesis, medieval manuscripts, and eighteenth-century graphic satire and caricature—all of which created an audience for the Victorian illustrated book, which, in turn reimagines techniques that resurface from these earlier dual art forms.Less

Introduction : The Arc of the Victorian Illustrated Book

Catherine J. Golden

Published in print: 2017-02-28

This introduction presents Golden’s methodological approach to connect illustrative styles across decades, genres, and national borders to offer a new framework for viewing the arc of a vibrant genre. Across this chronological sweep from the serial to the graphic novel, illustrative styles of caricature and realism are applauded, scorned, refashioned, revaluated, maintained, and revised. This introduction lays out how this study differs from, builds upon, and complements previous examinations of the Victorian illustrated book by providing a single-authored, sustained record of the illustrated book from the vantage point of the genre’s evolving aesthetics, paying particular attention to material culture. The introduction provides summaries of the book’s four body chapters and conclusion. The introduction concludes with an examination of important antecedents of the Victorian illustrated book—including the classical concept of ut pictura poesis, medieval manuscripts, and eighteenth-century graphic satire and caricature—all of which created an audience for the Victorian illustrated book, which, in turn reimagines techniques that resurface from these earlier dual art forms.